Your Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civ

Interesting strat... Never really thought of OO Sheaim. :p

1. Leaders:

Os Gabella. Why ? Malchavic = only 1 trait and that trait is pretty weak. I think he s intented to be an emergent leader capable of getting another trait but currently doesn’t work that way making him the worst possible leader choice for the sheaim.

Ophelia IS an emergent leader but for my strategy not interesting as it benefits a lot from having the summoner trait. Now of course Ophelia could get this one via emergent mechanics but its always a gamble and I don’t like reloading to get the better results.

Tebryn is the slightly worse Os in general but even more so for my strategy. Both share summoner so that’s good but the Arcane trait is pretty useless as passive xp gain for arcanes in FF was nerfed into almost uselessness and therefore potency is merely good for the spell strenght bonus but that one isn’t that big of a deal imho.
Since Os makes a good wonderbuilder and it lies along the critical research path the catacomb librarus is pretty much guaranteed to be built by me, so I ll have mage guilds for free which beats mage guilds for 50% less hammers.

So I m recommending Os Gabella for the important summoner trait and since many wonders come in handy in this strategy , industrious is also put into good use.

Woops, I forgot to make Malchavic Emergent. That'll be fixed. ;)

4. Your starting city:

Most of the time you wont start near water (especially with flavourstart on) but if you do, chose carefully. Obviously water has some benefits: we re going for OO so we ll have to research fishing & sailing anyhow. and workboats don’t stop citygrowth like workers. good good. Please keep in mind however that water is horsehockey terrain later on since it cannot be improved (oceans) or can only be marginally improved (coasts -> fishing villages) – it got nothing on a city with many rivertiles and cottages/farms.
Since your first city should be your future main city (capital and city with the tower of complanency) I d only recommend settling near water if you can get a location that has as little ocean as possible, preferably more land than water tiles and at least 2 good resources in the water.
Else go for a city with preferably no mountains in the BFC, many river tiles, some food resources, you know the drill…

Personally I took a coast city, but it was a really good starting place with many resources and more land than water tiles.

You should be able to improve all coastal/ocean tiles with either Fishing Boats or Whaling Boats. ;)

5. Your starting phase:

1. stay close to your cultural borders
2. have your adept and his skeleton escort the settler
3. the skeleton is expendable so as long as only 1 tough beast is attacking you cant really lose your adept or settler since you can always resummon skeleton next turn.
4. if you see a dragon or a huge bear – RUUUUUN!

Haha, won't have as many big animals early on next patch... But you WILL have an invisible marksman, with like 1 :strength:. Keep a scout with you, or the settler will be lost. ;)

Suggestions:

The arcane trait needs fixing. With potency almost useless due to low passive xp gain & caps in Fall further it’s a pretty bad trait, one of the worst.

Spiritual not only gives potency, it also gives mobility and it also gives no anarchy from changing religion / civics. And as everybody knows…. since savants can upgrade to mages spiritual pretty much means that even your arcane units will get potency anyhow PLUS mobility (which cancels out the one free promotion that you could argue is lost by going savant -> mage instead of adept -> mage ).

I m not sure if my memory is playing tricks on me but wasn’t Arcane at one point in base FFH supposed to also give 1 free promotion to each arcane units ?

That would be a welcome change. In the life of an archmage that d total out as 3 free promotions (1 at adept, 1 at mage, 1 at archmage, obviously on top of the free ones they already get) so it d be a pretty usefull trait.

Hmm... That would be a good change to Arcane, and would make it useful. I think I'll do that. ;)
 
Haha, won't have as many big animals early on next patch... But you WILL have an invisible marksman, with like 1 :strength:. Keep a scout with you, or the settler will be lost. ;)

I hate you. I just wanted to let you know. I hate you... alot...

-Colin

Edit: On the other hand, don't marksmen not target units with no combat? So they won't target workers (unless they took the hardy promo's) if there are other units on the tile?
 
Actually, I'm not sure here. Workers DO have a unitcombat, in order to gain their promotions, but they may not be targeted if there's a better unit on the tile... Will have to test this.

And really, the hamsters are easy to kill. Just keep a scout with you, like I said. Should be done anyway for the spiders. ;)
 
The hamster thing sounds like a riot... but again, a reminder to do nothing unescorted, and a little prize if you capture it and bring it to a city anyhow!
 
Jotnar tips for RiFE only, aimed at Diety difficulty with extra barbarian units.

  1. Pick your starting city location carefully! This will be your only city for a very long time so it is important that it be a good one. The ideal starting location will have the following properties:
    • Jotnar cities utilize 3 rings, not 2. Keep that in mind when picking the city location.
    • Next to a river on at least two sides. This provides improved defense and access to city improvements that require a river.
    • On top of a hill for defense.
    • Lots of rivers nearby so that nearby tiles can be converted to Flood Plains.
    • Lots of hills nearby for high production yields.
    • Resources which provide only food and health bonuses (e.g. deer).
    • Minimize all other resources (for the first city only!), you need these tiles for mines and farms, not specialty resources. Yet you do not want to loose the availability of the resource by using the tile for something else.
    • Not on the coast (for the first city only!)
    • Do not worry about mountains, they can be changed to hills later by Egrass the Founder.
  2. City Configuration
    • Start off building only Wild Trolls. These will be the backbone of your early exploration army and a powerful contingent of your late game army.
    • Pause building trolls only long enough to construct any improvement which adds gold or science (e.g. elder council).
    • Set the city to focus on Food and Hammer resources (bottom-right of the city screen) until a minimum of 4 trolls have been built. Then switch to Food and Science for the remainder of the game.
  3. Technology Path: Mining -> Mysticism -> Way of the Earthmother -> Resource Technologies as needed (e.g. Agriculture) -> Knowledge of the Ether -> Construction -> Festivals -> Iron Working (and any prerequisites along the way).
  4. Early on, only explore the world to the extent that you can do so from the tops of mountains, and then only when absolutely necessary! Exploration is not worth risking early game units which will become extremely powerful late game units as they age!
  5. Upgrade all Jotnar Citizens to Huscarl units as soon as money is available. These will be the defenders of your empire. Use them in groups of 2 or more Huscarl units and one Troll unit to hunt down barbarians and gain experience, but only when they threaten your empire! Do not leave civilization borders!
  6. Any time Giantkin units are not fighting barbarians, use them to build improvements. Focus on resources that provide hammers, then those that provide food. Build commerce improvements only once your city has sufficient food for maximum size and sufficient hammers to produce buildings at a rate to keep up with other civilizations.
  7. Once sufficient improvements have been constructed to keep the home city productive, happy, and healthy, build forts. Build lots of forts. This will be the primary way you expand your empire, not with cities!
  8. Build Egrass the Founder as soon as possible (at Knowledge of the Ether)
  9. Be wary of fighting early wars. Let your units gain in power and experience fighting barbarians and animals as long as possible.

If you have followed the above, you should be able to build a small but very powerful army which can defeat any other civilization. Owning the holy city for the Way of the Earthmother along with

Other civilizations will probably get far ahead on the technology tree. Keep track of their progress. Once they can trade technologies and have several important technologies you need, it is time to fight a war. The goal here is to fight only until the enemy civilization is willing to trade all of its technologies for a peace treaty.

By the end of this first war, if all has gone as planned, a game victory should be near certain.
 
I mentioned this in another thread but it seems appropriate here. Two words:
Ranger kills Hamster ->Minsc and Boo!

Or Hamster defeats ranger, I suppose. Though that's pretty unlikely.
 
The Balseraph despite their chaotic undertones are pretty much non-chaotic to play, focusing on either culture crushing or mimicry, with adopting the Council of Esus you can really drive home the point with whats his face, stealer of civilizations.

You'll want to play your mimics and to reflect that you'll want to go down a rather snarly research path in order to best utilise them as soon as possible. You'll want to start with either teching to Horseback Riding OR Fishing and Mysticism.(1) from there you'll want to decide to go to writing or bronze working.(2) This might be a good time to branch out from the rigid tech path and obtain situational techs like culture bonuses if Ascheron crashed your party.(3) Assuming you now have Deception-Warfare-Iron Working you should now think about invading someone, and invade them soon, you'll want to go back and pick up an auxillary military tech, mathematics.(4) If you've manage to survive thus far it's time to start managing your hopefully large empire by picking up the final key part of the Balseraph... Civilization, Drama.(5) This late in the game is virtually unplannable, and as such it's best to play defensive and conservative with your tech points.(6)


1: Mysticism is always an easy first for the bonus hammers but it may be wiser to hit up fishing first if you plummeted near a coast, otherwise go for horseback riding to set up Trade
2: You might want to consider getting some research ability before you head down the military path, since you're already on the way to it, but if barbarians are axing 'questions' at your door, it might be wise to obtain bronze working
3: The next point assumes you're going straight to mimics AND deception.
4: The reason being after the slight detour of situational techs its best to start rushing to gettings mimics AND deception, leveling them up more so they can survive combat through withdrawal chances and blitz so they can potentially gain the promotions they're missing and being great defenders
5: Since you've neglected your population or cannot gain more populations due to impending angry faces it might be wise to gain access to happy face boosting techs that are the balseraphs seemingly disturbing forte. (combining balseraph happy face harvesting and FoL makes for some pretty gigantic cities :|
6: What now, you're on your researching own now, the game has become far too dynamic to plot out effectively and is best to proceed defensively and cautiously.

There isn't a full set of ten tips just yet. But, this will just explain the tech advancement to best utilise the Mimic on its own, even if there are stronger strategies for early WAR/Culture Crush/City Booming (FoL + TREEEEEEEEEEES anyone?)
 
Jotnar tips for RiFE only, aimed at Diety difficulty with extra barbarian units.

[*]Start off building only Wild Trolls. These will be the backbone of your early exploration army and a powerful contingent of your late game army.

By the end of this first war, if all has gone as planned, a game victory should be near certain.

Fothal, I tried your strategy for my second ever Jotnar game (the first was several FF+ versions ago and ended in disaster). It didn't work, because all of my wild trolls went crazy on me and ended up attacking each other and dying. I was left with no units at all. I lost ten trolls in a row, so gave up the game. Was I doing something wrong?
 
Hunting tech makes your trolls loyal and gives them +1 offensive strength. This applies to all the ones you control as well as those you build for the rest of the game, and doesn't require any hoops like constructing buildings.

I strongly suggest going for AV as the Jotnar because STW completely kills their growth penalty, giving them the same 1.5 food/citizen as any other civ running STW. Skip researching way of the earthmother, you've better things to worry about (hunting, tracking). I think it's best to go KotE -> divination for Egrass, a life node, and a spirit node if you have a second raw mana, then Way of the Wicked -> AV -> Pact while you build your mage guild/adepts/nodes. When hyborem spawns and hell breaks loose, you'll be ready for it.
 
Ouch, we may need to block them from that....

To be honest, I want to move their food requirement to civ infos (Maybe trait, makes it more usable for others). Then have it modify the value before civics do, and move civics to a modification of the requirement rather than setting it... Which would mean sacrifice the weak would make them need 2.5 food, not 1.5. ;)
 
If you did that I'd go for order as the Jotnar for the extra courthouses and free law mana.
 
Lawful Neutral? Does that mean you plan on expanding alignments past the sad little attempt that is Grey Fox's year-old broader alignments option?
 
There's two threads on the subject. I'm not planning, it's already in. :lol: (At least, it is in my version of the mod; Not the released one. Not sure when I will release, lots of xml work left to do in regards to the Alignments... And one or two major projects being worked on by the team that may make it in the next patch)

Of course, it's not finalized and will undergo significant changes in the future, but the current system works perfectly for what it was designed to do. ;)

Description of the expanded Broader Alignments system

Description of the Lawful-Chaotic Alignment Axis
 
Anyone have any tips on using the sidar? I've always found that I never employ their racial ability to 'wane' as I find using those high level units for the purposes of defending my empire or crushing my foes to be far more useful.
 
Anyone have any tips on using the sidar? .

I never play sidar, but I remember there are some tips about them in another thread...
Look for "regular" FFH strategy forum, there you'll find a thread named exactly the same as this one. I think those hints should be useful in Rife too, but I do not know wich difference there are between Rife and FFH Sidar, apart from the different adventurer spawning mechanics.
 
Anyone have any tips on using the sidar? I've always found that I never employ their racial ability to 'wane' as I find using those high level units for the purposes of defending my empire or crushing my foes to be far more useful.

They are the ultimate cannon fodder civ. Don't use five units when twenty will do the job.

Start spamming warriors and sell your mother for an extra xp. Any that survive their first battle will get a nice chunk of xp. From then on have them pick off damaged units until they get the magic 26xp, at which point you wane them into Great Engineers or occasionally a Great Merchant to support your vast army.

As the tech becomes available, build whatever units gains 26xp the fastest. Mounted with Ride of Nine Kings, Adepts for the spells or Disciples with the Altar.

In particular the Altar is great with Confessors, they give you experience whether they live or die.

Heroes are also great, almost instant wane fodder.
 
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